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ultimatedefender Jun 08 2020

Federal election day should be made a national holiday.

We must increase voter turnout.

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In Favour

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yellownotepad The creation of a federal holiday on election day removes many of the excuses and barriers that many people have for not voting. The real question here is will this holiday increase voter turnout, and is increasing voter turnout something we value so highly in society that we are willing to shut down large sections of the economy for a day in order to do it. When we look at our elections in the past, usually around only 60% of people who are eligible to vote do so. This means that our democracy is in a way failing to achieve its most basic goal of giving "power to the people", because people are choosing not to take it. Increasing voter turnout then is a very important problem to address in our society so that we can make sure that the people running our governemnt are the people that society actually wants to represent their interests, which is something worth giving up a business day once every four years. If we've established that increasing voter turnout is something we value enough to give a national holiday, then the next question is will it actually work? If you look at the voting turnout demographics in most national elections, the people getting out to vote are disproportionately older citizens, while younger people struggle to get out to vote. Many of these are people who are in school at universities or working jobs, the national holiday would give them the time off school and work to be able to dedicate an entire day to their civic duty, to not only go and vote, but also time to do their research on who they would want to vote for and why. This is important because these younger demographics are the ones who will have to live with the consequences of the actions of elected officials, so society should help them access voting so that they can have a voice in there own futures.

1 Like Reply Aug 21 2020 Hide replies

Against

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User The implied notion in this argument, is that making federal election day a national holiday would increase voter turnout. What anyone arguing for the motion, assumes that people who fail to participate in their democracy, are failing to do so because of external situations such as lack of time (https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/P20-582.pdf). The belief that somehow making federal election day a holiday would erase these time conflicts, is simply an incorrect assumption as we already see that in Canada, employers are legally obligated to give time off work to allow their workers to vote, which most probably creates the biggest time conflict among the voter populous. The only thing that a national holiday serves to do, is to shut down services such as childcare and banking. Such departments as retail and Hospitals are forced to stay in work, putting an unnecessary strain on them due to the influx of customers and patients, and essentially punishing those working in these services. Take for example, a retail worker. On national election day, they are forced to work at their job, and because of the status of "national election day," most childcare centers are closed, leaving another facet of worry for this humble worker. This is the situation many small businesses and average workers face in the face of yet another holiday, who simply wouldn't be able to pass up the revenue of the date, and bring stress to the workforce.Adding another non-working day to the calendar, won't increase voter turnout, and serves to benefit a portion of the population, while forsaking the others.

0 Like Reply Jul 08 2020 Hide replies

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